


Eidolon

by Crunchysunrises



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 03:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crunchysunrises/pseuds/Crunchysunrises
Summary: Kisame tries to find a healer for Itachi. Unfortunately, he's about four years too early.





	Eidolon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



> **Title:** Eidolon  
>  **Fandom:** Naruto  
>  **Rating:** Teen  
>  **Content Notes:** None  
>  **Disclaimer:** I have no rights to or within the Naruto franchises, copyrights, characters or trademarks. This is for fun, not profit.  
>  **Summary:** Kisame tries to find a healer for Itachi. Unfortunately, he's about four years too early.  
>  **Definition:** **Eidolon - an idealized person or thing; a specter or phantom.**  
>  **Additional Notes:** Your prompt went a little bit... crackier than I expected. And I didn't get as much written on it as I had hoped. But I think that's probably par for the course? I hope you like it!

_This,_ Sakura thought, perhaps a trifle bitterly, _is when the heroine in a novel would be amazing. She would step up and save herself._

Unfortunately, Sakura wasn’t any of those things. She wasn’t a heroine or in a novel. She had never once in her entire life been the first to volunteer or step forward, choosing instead to wait and see how those who did it first fared. And in her entire genin career – all three months of it – she had always been the one saved, never been the one doing the saving.

There was nothing amazing about Haruno Sakura, and everyone knew it. Even her jounin-sensei knew it, which was why he had secret one-on-one training sessions with Sasuke and Naruto that she wasn’t supposed to know about, but he had never once spoken to her outside of team practice and team missions. She didn’t even know any techniques that she didn’t graduate from the academy knowing, and Sakura wasn’t any faster or stronger than she was the day that she graduated. In fact, her conditioning might have slipped a bit, since she didn’t have Ino (or anyone else) to encourage her to keep up with it anymore. She didn’t even have a bloodline limit.

So really, the question was as much ‘Why hasn’t he already killed me?’ as ‘Why did he save me?’ or ‘Why is he even bothering to kidnap me?’

She’d _asked,_ of course, just like she had seen Kakashi-sensei pump Zabuza for information while seemingly making casual conversation with him, but her captor had just grunted and hitched her higher against his shoulder, so either she hadn’t done it right or he wasn’t the talkative type.

All that left her with plenty of time in which to hope that Sasuke and Naruto were okay and that they had had a chance to notify a proctor about her being kidnapped from the Forest of Death. Naruto had been unconscious the last time that she saw him, but Sasuke had looked alright, just shocked and a little bit scared.

Sakura wondered if anyone would even bother to try to rescue her. She liked to think that they would – she wanted it so badly that it hurt – but she wasn’t stupid. Strategies and Tactics had been her best classes at the academy, and three months on Team Seven had been something of a wakeup call besides.

Truthfully, Sakura didn’t think it likely that anyone was going to be sent after her.

She wasn’t super valuable to the village, not like Sasuke or, she suspected, Naruto. Why else would someone have taught that idiot a jounin level technique? And he had all that strange red chakra, just like Sasuke had the sharingan, and Kakashi-sensei had his eye and his special chakra. She didn’t have anything like that. Her only talent was chakra control, and it was the sort of thing any halfway decent ninja could train in, not like being born with a bloodline limit.

Kakashi-sensei had said that teammates who abandon the mission are trash, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash. But it felt like Kakashi-sensei had abandoned her months ago – or maybe just given up on her – and he hadn’t even been with them in the Forest of Death. Leaving his least favorite student to… whatever this was... wouldn’t be abandoning her, so much as choosing not to exert himself on her behalf, and heaven knew that nothing in the last three months had persuaded him to exert himself on her behalf before now.

Except for that one time in Wave Country; but if he had left her then, Zabuza would have bisected her _and_ the client with his sword. Kakashi-sensei had probably been rescuing Tazuna back then, not her. It seemed more likely than him taking any particular interest in her, even that far back.

The boys would probably feel bad about this, but they couldn’t help her, even if they wanted to. They were just genin, so it wasn’t like either of them could rescue her, and they didn’t have anyone that they could persuade to come rescue her for them. They’d probably forget about her soon enough anyway. Naruto forgot mission parameters almost as soon as he left the Hokage’s Tower.

The village might want vengeance against whoever this was for infiltrating the village, killing one of their strongest (if then missing) ninja, and then carrying off the least valuable genin on Team Seven, but that didn’t necessarily mean that anyone would save her. They might kill her to get to him – or because they thought she was compromised now – or for a thousand other reasons.

 _I’m probably on my own,_ Sakura decided grimly, and then promptly felt sick for reasons other than the bony shoulder currently digging into her belly or all the blood pounding in her head.

It was the worst possible outcome. No one should have to rely on her saving them – not even herself.

 

 

 

He ran for hours, Sakura bumping against his shoulder. By the time that they stopped, she was dizzy and her head hurt, and it was almost dark, although that might have been because they were in a cave. Somewhere. Sakura had started feeling lost almost before her kidnapper had cleared the chain link fence that encircled the Forest of Death. Konohagakure looked entirely different when she was hanging upside down.

When he finally tossed her off of his shoulder, Sakura landed hard.

“Oof!” she grunted. Her butt, her back, and her everything else hurt – including all the individual strands of her hair – but it didn’t matter. She was finally off his shoulder. She was even lying flat on something.

The sudden lack of intense discomfort was so wonderful that Sakura didn’t even have it in her to feel afraid, just grateful. She was never going to move again.

Sakura squeaked, a rush of adrenaline snapping her eyes open, when an enormous hand fisted itself into the front of her dress. Her hands flew up, both of her smaller hands together not enough to wrap around the blue wrist of her kidnapper. She fumbled, trying to press any of the pressure points that they had taught her in the academy, and above her, Orochimaru’s killer _laughed_ at her.

Orochimaru had laughed at her too.

Sakura honestly wasn’t sure if that was worse than being ignored, but she was probably dead anyway – either from this guy or the village or something worse – and she was just so tired of being laughed at, that it didn’t seem like much to kick out at him.

Her foot hit _something_ under his voluminous cloak, and he grunted, his attention narrowing on her, but at least he stopped laughing at her. Sakura tried to hold onto that as he lifted her higher and away from himself.

“Well, I guess it’s good to see that you’re still yourself even if you don’t have your combat techniques yet,” grunted the missing nin. The line through his mist symbol gleamed in the fading afternoon light.

 _What combat techniques?_ Sakura wondered, but she kept her mouth shut. It was probably better for her if this guy thought that she was more valuable than she actually was.

He dumped her next to a figure that was lying prone on the ground, his dark hair spread around his pale face. He was… very, _very_ pretty. He was even prettier than Sasuke. Though come to think of it, he _did_ look a lot like Sasuke with his large dark eyes and the shape of his face even if he had those weird lines down his cheeks.

 _Uchiha?_ Sakura wondered. She tried to read something in his sweaty face, but his eyes were glazed and his face was slack. He was so sick that Sakura didn’t think that he knew she was there.

“Fix him,” demanded the missing nin from his place behind her. “I don’t want him getting worse again.”

His demand was like being dropped into cold water. Sakura’s entire body went numb. She couldn’t even breathe.

 _So much for bluffing about my value,_ Sakura thought bitterly.

Half turning, Sakura shot her kidnapper an uncertain look. Crossing his arms over his chest, he glowered back at her. Sakura gulped.

“I don’t… know how?” Sakura finally admitted, because her mind was blank. She didn’t know what else she could do. If there was a way to fake molding her chakra into healing chakra, Sakura didn’t know it.

The missing Mist nin’s arms tightened across his chest, his biceps bulged, and Sakura quailed.

“Don’t lie,” he snapped. “You’re, what, twelve? You have to have started your training as a medic nin by now.”

“Medic nin?” repeated Sakura, astonished. “Who said that I’m a medic nin?”

“You’re the Slug Sannin’s heir! Of _course,_ you’re a medic nin! Someday, you’re going to be one of the best medic nin in the world!”

“I’m no one’s heir. You’ve got me mistaken for someone else.”

“I know who you are!”

“You obviously don’t!” snapped Sakura, frustrated past the point of caution. Inner Sakura’s brash confidence filled her, and she stumbled to her feet, snarling, “I’m Haruno Sakura, genin of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. I was promoted to the rank of genin three months ago – eighty-four days, to be exact – and my jounin-sensei is Hatake Kakashi. And he doesn’t even like me. I come from a civilian family, we aren’t rich, and I don’t have a bloodline limit. I don’t have any skills that I didn’t learn at the academy. Whatever you thought to use me for is irrelevant, because I’m utterly useless to you. You stole the wrong genin!”

An awful silence descended in the wake of her words, one interrupted only by the sound of ragged breathing. Sakura wasn’t even scared. Well, not much. Not as much as she had been against Zabuza.

“Well, shit,” said the missing nin.


End file.
